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When they can't tell me how. Sounds simple, but a wealth of detail is hidden in that simple question. When faced with an implausible action declaration, ask "How?". By asking, you're forcing your players to: Consider whether their action makes sense. Limit themselves to plausibility - if they can't even imagine a way that could work, then they won't be ...

Sigh, I think others are making this more complicated than it is and aren't answering the right question. Perhaps it will make more sense if you restate that brief blurb as: The players determine what their characters say, think, and do. The GM describes everything else in the world. You "say" what your character does, the GM "says" (aka determines) ...

No, there is no equivalent to a "skill check" in Dungeon World. Dungeon World operates on a different set of principles that don't require or really permit task-based resolution rolls. If you're playing DW, you have to give up the idea that everything requires a roll. The most important principle for this question is that dice are only rolled when a move ...

As you play, the players say what their characters say, think, and do when it's relevant or interesting to the story. A good exercise would be to imagine you are reading a book. On a book you usually knows when a character feels fear or anger, but their evil betrayal is kept until the finale. Normally, characters' thoughts are shared like in these examples: ...

First off, all of edgerunner's answers are great. But I wanted to add some Dungeon World specifics: Check p.19 and you'll see that 6- isn't "failure" - it's "trouble". The GM will say what happens and the player will mark XP. You are attaching non-DW simulationist ideas to DW mechanics by your supposition that 6- means "failure." These principles can apply ...

This looks like a good spot to let them succeed with complications. Some ideas that come to mind are: He climbs the chain but drops his weapon in the progress The chain he climbed happened to be on the wrong side of the tower, so he must brave more of the tower's denizens to reach his goal. The chain also happens to ground the tower's lightning rod, and ...

Using Spout Lore to reveal a detailed, pre-created world is contrary to the rules. There is a caveat I should make here. I'm going to talk about rules the GM has to follow. You're welcome to not consider them binding rules, but DW as designed does. If you don't follow the GM rules, you're "voiding the warranty" on the game and it will not operate as ...

Make the game more narrative! Even though you have turns, don't forget that in a round of combat all actions are contemporaneous. (In some rule-sets the terms turn and round have their meaning swapped... by the way the idea is the same...) In a round robin approach you can just collect all players' actions in a turn of combat and just explain what happens ...

It's up to the GM to direct turns in combat by switching between characters, often by asking "What do you do?" The easiest question to use is "What do you do?" Whenever you make a move, end with "What do you do?" You don't even have to ask the person you made the move against. Take that chance to shift the focus elsewhere: "Rath's spell is torn apart ...

In Dungeon World, it's very important to get the carts and the horses in the right order, else it annoys the pig and the metaphors get horribly mixed. Moves come second, never first. If you find yourself looking at a move and asking yourself, "How do I make that work?" then you've got the cart in front of the horse and you need to start over. Always ...

The spout lore move acts like a general knowledge skill. It even says that the GM can ask, "How do you know this?", which is a great question that should definitely color the GM's response. For interrogation, you want parley. The leverage is probably their lives or their freedom.

Though @Tynam's answer is excellent, I did want to give an alternative answer. When they ask me, instead of showing me. When we first started playing Dungeon World, I had reservations about my ability not to plan, and one of my players brought up something that I was already doing in the context of Fate that made me feel better about it. Letting the ...

Here are the traditional reason I would say no to my players and why I shouldn't in Dungeon World: Because doing so would ruin my plans In my head, this is physically impossible or there's not enough time etc. Because the action would cause sudden PvP combat Here's why I would be wrong to say no for those reasons in Dungeon World 1. Because doing so ...

Dungeon World has GM moves and player moves. The GM should never speak the name of a GM move. The GM should usually relate any custom move that the players are rolling for, whether they be adventure moves, campaign moves, new class moves, etc. Chapter 13, How to GM It’s everyone’s responsibility to watch for when a move has been triggered, ...

I do not believe there is. You could just use spout lore. Personally, I'd just ask the players if any of them spoke goblin. Ask why/how they learnt it, it's bound to be interesting. Essentially, unless the struggle to find a translator is hilarious and awesome, just give it to them. If you really want to roll some dice about it, Spout Lore would work well ...

You would normally need two multiclass moves to take two moves, but Animal Companion and Command are starting moves that don't do anything without the other, so they depend on each other. In that case, they count as one for multiclassing (p. 31): The multiclass moves allow you to gain moves from another class. You get to choose any move of your level or ...

Introduction A miss means that the character's action is unsuccessful or carries major consequences. Unless the move tells you what to do, all moves work the same on a miss—the GM takes action, doing something dangerous to the characters. Chapter 12: The GM You also make a move when the players give you a golden opportunity. A golden ...

"Stacking" is a concept that is not touched very much upon. Searching through the PDF, the only place it shows up is on page 327: n Armor: It protects you from harm and absorbs damage. When you take damage, subtract your armor from the total. If you have more than one item with n Armor, only the highest value counts. +n Armor: It protects you ...

Languages are something that have come up in our Dungeon World campaign a lot. There's no language list or anything in the game because that kind of thing isn't usually much fun (at least, not to us - you could very easily have a list and say "for each + to your INT, add one to your list). What I do, when I GM, is just ask questions. When I say "the ...

Nothing in Dungeon World is a straight conversion of D&D – everything is re-imagined. Even the base classes provided can't be used to convert a D&D character straight across (for example, in stock DW there's no way you can make a Dwarven Druid, while you can easily do so in D&D 3.x without creating a house rules). A straight conversion of new ...

This is a good question, because I think there are a lot of good settings and modules out there that can be used for Dungeon World. ...And I think the answer is really simple. You even hit upon it yourself, pre-made settings would leave little room for leaving blanks and asking questions, So, where there are blanks, ask. Where there aren't, don't. I ...

It isn't up to you to make your players defy danger with any particular stat. It's up to the players to describe how they defy the danger in a way which plays to their own strengths and by doing so indicate the stat they use: "The riders charge straight at you, whooping over the thundering hooves. What do you do ?" "I counter-charge with my shield to ...

In the Dungeon World core book it does not expressly state a level restriction on the bonus spell for human clerics and wizards from the wizard or cleric spell lists. It does clearly state level restrictions on known spells in the specific write-ups for the Cleric and Wizard. That said, it does state the character can cast(Cleric p92, Wizard p146) the spell ...

A one-shot session of Dungeon World is pretty trivial, actually. So far, all games of DW I've played have been one-shots. All you need to prepare as DM is a short adventure, typically a dungeon. You don't need to deal with Fronts at all, and setup is the normal quick character-creation process of throwing the playbooks at the players and asking them to fill ...

In the case of a character wanting to take a move that is not available to his class, he can't take the move. Kicking down a door (Bend Bars/Lift Gates) is a simplistic example that it might at first glance seem should be available to everyone. But, take the move Cast A Spell. If a fighter decided that he wanted to cast a spell, it would be outside of the ...

This is up to the fiction: your Dungeon World won't have a standard that matches my Dungeon World's standard, and besides, not every hireling is going to expect the exact same number of coins in pay. So how does the fiction determine this? The move gives you some guidance: Is it generous? If you don't do this, your offered pay could be paltry and you ...

The modifier is the number of bonds with that character. Dungeon World, page 54 You can use the same character for more than one statement. When a move has you roll+Bond you’ll count the number of bonds you have with the character in question and add that to the roll. There aren't any bonds worth anything other than one, but you could add ...

I've only started in my DungeonWorld Campaign, converting Dark Sun for use, so I'm sure this will be modified when I get more experience. The first thing to do is to look at what the GM is supposed to do, and how this is incompatible with the setting. Another question helped me get that into perspective, How can I encourage players to Spout Lore, ...

I have this rich setting with plenty of details ... I'd like to give them a lot of information contextual to locations and events happening around. I don't know if I'm still in my D&D mindset but I see it like that. Dungeon World will probably work better for you if you work with the players to establish the setting by asking a lot of questions at ...

I try to imagine the narrative of combat as being a bit like a soccer game. The spotlight is passed back and forth and sometimes intercepted. You want to make sure that everyone gets a chance, but remember, the GM's mandate is to always ask "What do you do?" and to be curious about the situation. Think about who each action might affect and ask them how ...